Officer-Involved Killings of Minor Children in the United States

• In Event: Rutgers at 50: Problems of Racial and Social Injustice

Abstract

The disproportionate killing of Black men by sworn law enforcement officers has been a consistent source of focus and disagreement within criminological literature. More recently the focus has been expanded to include Black women as victims. The current research expands the scope of this research by examining incidents of officer-involved killings of youth below age 18. The period under study is January 1, 2013 to October 16, 2017, which represents roughly one year before, during and after the officer-involved killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The aims of the study were to determine the prevalence of such police youth homicides, the characteristics of victims and officers, and the contexts in which such homicides occur. Using publicly available data, in-depth case studies were constructed for 121 national incidents identified in an online database. This paper reports age, race, and gender findings, along with the contextual setting, identified as urban, suburban or rural.

Authors

• Joshua Ruffin, Towson University

• Delores Jones-Brown, Fayetteville State University